Ramat Gan: At a meeting inside the Ramat Gan bourse recently, members of the Israeli industry met to hear about plans for the E.G.L. Platinum chain of grading labs.

E.G.L Platinum president Menahem Sevdermish FGA, highlighted the work that the lab is doing to ensure that the chain offers accurate and uniform grading standards across its branches worldwide.

One of the key points was that each of the EGL affiliates worldwide, grade to as similar a standard as possible. As part of this process, staff from each of the EGL labs will be brought to Israel for a two-week course to check their standards and technical skills. Sevdermish emphasized that the idea behind this is to ensure that each lab works to the same level of strictness and professionalism with regard to grading.

In order to facilitate this process, E.G.L. Platinum will be checking the master stone sets of each affiliate to ensure tighter grading standards. If necessary, he said, new master sets would be issued.

Key E.G.L. Platinum staff members will be visiting each of the labs to see how they are operating and to ensure that they have the correct knowledge and equipment to work accurately. In this way, labs will only be able to grade stones for which they have the correct and proper knowledge to do so.

Sevdermish stressed the need, in light of problems with questionable grading, that each lab had to be both transparent in its dealings, and available for World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) inspection at any time to check the standard of their work.